The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  “Forever sisters,” we said in unison, our voices a mixture of sadness and memories.

  We sat back in silence, quietly chewing, and watched the road disappear beneath the car.

  Gil

  Ever since I was old enough to behave, my dad liked for me to come to his veterinary practice and watch while he stitched up dogs or set a broken leg. I never thought that blood was gross or that sticking a needle into torn skin was all that bad. I could watch without fainting like a girl or getting sick, and I think this made my dad proud. He’d pull up a short stool for me to stand on so I could get a better look, and then he’d forget all about me as he quickly fixed whatever was broken on the animal he was working on.

  When he and Aunt Marnie took me down to the dock to get in the jon boat for the first time since my accident, I felt like he was looking at me like he did those hurt animals. That all he had to do was lay me out on a table and fix what was broken. I don’t think he knows that, but he’s like that with his orchids, too. Mama once told me that he’s on a mission to fix the world, and I want to tell him that most of the world doesn’t know it needs fixing and the rest of it probably doesn’t care. And sometimes I want to tell him that he should fix himself first and then see if everybody else really seems to be broken.

  But I can’t tell him any of this, which is why I let him bring me down to the dock. Being in the marsh is a lot different from being in the ocean, so I think I can handle it. Especially since Aunt Marnie and I have been sketching down there, and it’s started to feel normal to me again. Even the blue heron whose nest is by our dock looked at me as if she recognized me when I stepped to the end of the dock. Mama once told me that blue herons are good omens, so I took it as a sign.

  Daddy got in the boat first, leaving Aunt Marnie and me on the dock. I thought I’d be nervous as I stepped in, but I just did it with one leg first and then the other, and I was done. Daddy hid his surprise pretty well as he turned to help Aunt Marnie into the boat. She’d made sure we all wore life jackets, and mine was a bit too small, as if she’d forgotten how old I was when she’d picked the child-sized one out of the shed.

  “Y’all set?” my dad asked.

  I nodded and he turned on the motor, starting us at a real low speed. If we were pulling a skier, he would have drowned, we were going so slow. Aunt Marnie took one look at my face and told my dad to go faster, so he did.

  We stayed in the shallowest parts, places where you could see the pluff mud on the bottom, and close enough to the edge of the marsh that you could reach out and pull at the tall grass that looked like fingers trying to grab you.

  I smiled at my dad and Aunt Marnie because they looked so worried about me and because I really did feel fine on the water. Since my aunt had arrived, I’d felt as if I were learning to draw all over again. Scared at first, and then little by little surprising myself at each little thing I did right. Being on a boat made me less scared of the water, but it didn’t really change anything. Just like drawing a shell on the beach didn’t change the shell. I still knew what had happened that night on the boat with my mother, and I still couldn’t talk about it. My dad had said something about facing my fears, and that was why I had to go out on the boat. But the fear of drowning is nothing compared to other things. And facing that was like staring into the gates of hell. I know about hell because Grandpa told me all about it. It’s real. I know because I’ve seen it.

  Aunt Marnie smiled back at me and let go of the sides of her seat, which she’d been holding like somebody who’d never been on a boat before.

  “Are you having a good time?”

  I nodded and let the wind push at my hair.

  “Am I going too fast?” my dad asked.

  I shook my head and smiled back at him as he made the motor go a little faster.

  Aunt Marnie pulled at the hem of her shorts as if to make them longer. “Your teacher for the upcoming school year called today. I almost told her she had the wrong number when she asked for Gil Maitland.”

  I looked at her, not understanding.

  Daddy said, “Officially it’s hyphenated: Maitland-Bristow. But on the school records, to make it easier for Gil, it’s just Maitland. Diana wanted it that way.”

  Her eyebrows wrinkled for a moment before she turned back to me. “Your teacher wanted you to know that she was looking forward to meeting you.”

  I looked back at the water, trying to picture myself in math class and raising my hand to ask a question. I even opened my mouth to say something, but only air came out. It was as if my mouth didn’t know what to do anymore, and I suddenly felt like a bird who’d forgotten how to fly.

  Aunt Marnie put a soft hand on my knee while my daddy spoke to me. “Don’t worry about it, Gil. You’ll be ready when you’re ready and not before. I’ve been thinking, though, about maybe homeschooling you for the first half of the year. Or for however long it takes.”

  I glanced up at him in time to see Aunt Marnie shoot him a look that said she was as surprised as I was.

  Aunt Marnie raised her voice and I could tell she was angry. “Have you thought about who is actually going to be able to stay home with him? Will you be able to fit it in with your practice? Because I don’t think Diana would be the best choice.”

  He looked at her with one of those smiles people wear when they know they’ve done something wrong. “Well, I was kind of thinking that you’d be the perfect choice. You’re a teacher, after all, and you understand Gil. Plus, he likes you.”

  I smiled broadly at my daddy’s prompting and Aunt Marnie rolled her eyes.

  “I told you that I’m not planning on staying that long. I’ve got a life and career back at home, you know.”

  “You are home,” Daddy said, at the same time that I said the words in my head. When Aunt Marnie had been out on the dock crabbing, I thought that she was more at home here than a bird in its nest. I wasn’t sure why she’d say any different, except that it had more to do with her and Mama and how they didn’t seem to know each other anymore. But when they look at each other, it’s like a whole desert of sand sits between them anyway, so I don’t think there’s any reason for Aunt Marnie to go back to Arizona.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” she said with a look grown-ups use around kids who are old enough to understand what they’re saying.

  “How about at dinner?” he asked.

  She looked confused. “Won’t there be young ears at the table, too?”

  “Not at a restaurant.”

  “Why would we be at a restaurant?”

  My dad looked at me and I shrugged, as confused as he was about how clueless a smart lady like my aunt Marnie could be.

  “Because I would drive us there and we’d go in and sit at a table. Maybe have a glass of wine that a waiter would bring to us. I hear they have food, too. We could actually eat some. After the server brought the food to us.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  “I could be.”

  “And what would be the deciding factor?”

  “Whether or not you said yes.”

  I looked from one face to the other and felt embarrassed. They were both glowing like oyster shells in the sun and trying not to smile at each other. It made me want to puke. I looked away from their faces to where Aunt Marnie was still trying to pull the hem of her shorts over her knees. I noticed that my dad kept looking there, too.

  “I’ll go out to eat with you, but it wouldn’t be a date. Just a chance for us to sit down and talk about what’s best for Gil.”

  My dad nudged me with his foot, and I gave Aunt Marnie another big smile. It was then that I noticed that we were heading out of the small creeks and into deeper water, and I felt the breath leave my chest. Aunt Marnie must have noticed, too, because she went still and quiet and her hands gripped the sides of the boat again.

  Daddy’s lips pressed tight together as he began to quickly steer us into a U-turn. “Damn, I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

&n
bsp; I was trying to find the courage to move my leg to step on his foot to remind him that he was not supposed to swear but Aunt Marnie stopped me with a touch on my arm. I looked up at her and saw that she was looking out over the boat toward the deeper water. I turned my head to see what she was seeing and that was when I saw them.

  There were three or four dolphins swimming together about twenty feet away from our boat. My dad cut the engine and we bobbed up and down in the boat’s wake and watched the dolphins. They were swimming close to the surface, their fins and most of their backs sticking out of the water like angels’ wings in a reverse heaven.

  Aunt Marnie’s voice was quiet when she spoke, as if she were afraid that she’d scare them off. “I haven’t seen any dolphins in such a long, long time.” She smiled what I call a “secret smile,” because it was something in her head that was making her smile and not really the dolphins. “Did Grandpa ever tell you the story about Pelorus Jack?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s a true story. Pelorus Jack was a dolphin who lived on the other side of the world from us, in New Zealand, about a hundred years ago. They’re not sure where he came from or why he was there, but he saved hundreds of lives by guiding ships through a really treacherous pass. They say he probably lost his mother very young, and that’s why he didn’t follow real dolphin behavior. But for twenty-four years, Pelorus Jack led ships to safety through dangerous rocks and strong currents.”

  “Whatever happened to him?” Daddy asked.

  “No one knows for sure, but they think that he died of old age. Twenty-four years is about the life span of a wild dolphin, so that would make sense.” She smiled again, another secret smile. “Diana used to cry thinking that Jack had died alone out in the ocean, so Grandpa told her that God, knowing what a gentle spirit he was, had put him to sleep and then taken him up to heaven, where all animals who have been well loved are allowed to go and where they wait for the people who loved them to join them one day.”

  My dad looked back at the dolphins. “I never would have thought that Diana could be such a sentimentalist.”

  Aunt Marnie studied her hands for a moment. “There’s probably a lot that you don’t know about Diana.”

  “And you do?”

  She looked at my dad for a long time, the only sound that of the dolphins splashing. “I’m her sister” was all she said, as if that explained everything.

  My dad nodded, as if he understood, and then we all went back to looking at the dolphins as they swam farther and father away until they were only black dots out on the distant water. I thought about Pelorus Jack as I watched them and how great it would be to have somebody like him to guide you through all the difficult parts that are too tough to go alone.

  CHAPTER 16

  The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.

  —HERMAN MELVILLE

  Diana

  I sat on the back porch playing chess with my grandfather, our previous argument not forgotten but left simmering on a burner so that we were both aware that its smoke floated in the air around us like a ghost.

  As usual I was losing, but I didn’t care. I had been worried that he would refuse to see me, and I was so relieved when he agreed to a game that I would have gladly conceded any game. Sitting across black and white squares had been the refuge of my childhood, and I found I could not give it up.

  I was staring at one of my bishops, contemplating my next move and wishing I had a cigarette but knowing that I wouldn’t dare smoke in front of Grandpa, when the door opened and Marnie stepped out on the porch. She held a page from a sketchbook, the top edge torn and ragged as if it had been hastily ripped from the pad.

  We had settled into a wary truce, my sister and I, since our drive into Charleston to buy cigarettes. I’d been furiously angry at having to curtail my plans for the day, but had rediscovered something about my sister when she hadn’t said a word to Quinn about me taking the car without his permission.

  I faced her as she walked toward me but I didn’t smile. There was only so much I could concede to my sister. She kissed our grandfather on the cheek, and then I watched as he took hold of her hand and squeezed it tightly, as if she needed the reassurance to speak with me.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but I wanted to show something to Diana.”

  She held out the paper in her hand and I took it. I stared down at it for a long time before it registered what it was I was looking at.

  “It’s from Gil,” she explained as if I couldn’t tell my own son’s handiwork. “He made it for you and wanted me to give it to you.”

  I was almost amused that this same child she spoke about not more than fifteen minutes before had emerged from his father’s greenhouse and then made a huge circle around the house to avoid me and the closest entrance to go through the front door.

  I met my sister’s eyes for a brief moment before returning to the charcoal pencil drawing I held in my hand, the warm breeze gently trying to pry it from my shaking fingers. It was a drawing of the orange tree I had planted with Gil and given to him on a foolishly naive day when I thought that I was on my way to being healed. I should have known even then that any Maitland couldn’t have escaped God’s ire so completely, and instead of planting the tree, I should have been hunkering down and preparing for the next onslaught. But we are all allowed our foolishness, I thought as I looked down at the exquisite drawing in my hand.

  “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Marnie asked, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

  I stared at the delicate strokes of gray and black that created the trunk and branches of the little tree, the shadings that blurred into shadows of light and darkness so that leaves that were flat and one-dimensional on a single sheet of paper, moved and twitched in the wind, and I knew, as if I had ever had any doubt, that I was witnessing genius.

  I couldn’t speak and remained staring at the piece of paper in my hands long after I had ceased seeing it. There had been a reason why I’d encouraged Gil to sail with his father, to find another passion. We Maitlands have been artists for centuries, our passion and talents surpassed only by the accompanying madness. Some say that there can be no art without a little madness, and we had both in spades. One only had to look at my mother and myself for corroboration.

  Since Gil’s first preschool crayon drawings, I had known. I never was lucky enough to receive pictures of stick families with a line of blue at the top to indicate sky. Gil brought home fully fleshed renderings of birds and animals, of his great-grandfather and his father, and of the debris left behind by the outgoing tide.

  I never framed a single picture, nor stuck any of his artwork on our refrigerator with alphabet magnets. By the time he’d reached first grade, I had taken all of his paints and crayons and thrown them away, and had begun the first of many refusals to his asking if he could go to art camp or take special art classes after school. Even the pleadings of the art teacher at school couldn’t sway me. I knew where his art could take him because I’d stared into the darkness long enough, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen to my son.

  “Don’t you like it?” Marnie asked again.

  I placed it facedown on the side table next to me. “It’s fine,” I said, returning my attention to the chessboard.

  I could hear the anger in Marnie’s voice. “Gil made that just for you, you know. The least you could do is show a little excitement at how talented he is. Don’t you think you should frame it or something? It’s really special.”

  “No,” I said. Grandpa put a hand on my arm, stopping me from saying anything more. He knew and understood, and that was enough. Later, I would take the picture up to my studio to my locked armoire and place it in the box with all the other precious things that Gil had made for me over the years. But I would never let him know. I couldn’t.

  Our attention was diverted by the sound of tires on gravel, and we turned to
see a bright red pickup truck slowly navigating the dusty driveway. I recognized Trey Bonner after he parked and stepped out of the driver’s side.

  He took off his baseball cap as he walked toward the steps. “Hello, Reverend,” he said, nodding to my grandfather. Then his eyes skipped over me before settling on Marnie. “Ladies.”

  Marnie pushed a piece of hair behind her ear and smiled. “Hello, Trey. What brings you all the way out here?”

  “I just wanted to let Quinn know that I should be done with the major repairs to his boat this week, so if he and Gil wanted to get started with the cosmetic work, we could set up some kind of a schedule.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “Couldn’t you have taken care of that with a phone call?”

  He looked at me with those warm brown eyes, which had been melting hearts, including mine, since high school, but he didn’t back away. Which is one of the things that I’d liked about Trey Bonner all along.

  “Yeah, I guess I could have, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing Marnie again. We haven’t seen each other in a while, and I was thinking I might be able to persuade her to go out to dinner with me Wednesday night to catch up.”

  He turned to Marnie, who was looking as uncomfortable as if she’d sat on a red-ant hill.

  “Actually,” she said, squirming, “I already have plans.”

  Both Grandpa and I turned to her and I said, “You do?”

  She swallowed. “Yes, actually. Um, Quinn and I wanted to get away somewhere so we could discuss Gil and his plans for the upcoming school year.”

  I spoke before I could think. “And you didn’t think to ask me?”

  Trey grinned. “Why should she? You’re not married to him anymore, remember?”

  Grandpa squeezed my arm but I shook him off. “That’s not what I was talking about. I was wondering why I shouldn’t be included in talks about my own son.” I wanted to tell myself that was really the only reason I was upset. But the thought of Quinn and Marnie together was almost as devastating.